Curator
National Museum of the American Indian
Smithsonian Institution
PO Box 37012
MRC 538
Washington, D.C. 20013-7012
mcmullena@nmaicrc.si.edu
Research Interests
Native North American ethnology, history, and material culture, especially Woodlands and Prairies; ethnohistory; Indigenous historiography; museum studies; history of ethnographic research; museum collecting; invention of tradition/cultural revitalization; ethnicity and identity.
Current Research Projects
Historic Native New England material culture and its relation to identity and survival; social contexts of Indian life and the meaning of continued craft production to modern Native identity; transitions in Native lives in southeastern New England from the late nineteenth century onward; Algonkian and Siouan sacred bundles; historic Northeastern Native interaction, intertribal relations, and regional culture.
Recent Publications
2002 Blood and Culture: Negotiating Race in Twentieth-Century Native New England. In Confounding the Color Line: Indian-Black Relations in North America, edited by James F. Brooks, 261-91. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
1996 Soapbox Discourse: Tribal History, Indian-White Relations, and Southeastern New England Powwows. The Public Historian 18(4):53-74.
1994 "The Heart Interest": Native Americans at Mount Hope and the King Philip Museum. In Passionate Hobby: Rudolf Frederick Haffenreffer and the King Philip Museum, ed. Shepard Krech III, pp. 167-85. Bristol RI: Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology, Brown University.
1994 Native Basketry, Basket Styles, and Changing Group Identity in Southern New England. In Proceedings of the Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife, ed. Peter Benes, pp. 76-88. Boston: Boston University.
1994 What's Wrong With This Picture?: Context, Coversion, Survival, and the Development of Regional Native Cultures and Pan-Indianism in Southeastern New England. In Enduring Traditions: The Native Peoples of New England, ed. Laurie Weinstein, pp. 123-50. Westport CT: Bergin and Garvey.
1992 Talking Through Baskets: Meaning, Production, and Identity in the Northeast Woodlands. In Basketmakers: Meaning and Form in Native American Baskets, ed. Linda Mowat, Howard Morphy, and Penny Dransart, 19-36. Oxford: Pitt Rivers Museum.
1990 Many Motives: Change in Northeastern Native Baskets and Basket Making. In The Art of Native American Basketry: A Living Legacy, ed. Frank W. Porter III, 45-78. Westport CT: Greenwood Press.
1989 editor, with Diane Kopec, An Island In Time: Three Thousand Years of Cultural Exchange on Mount Desert Island. Bulletin XII. Bar Harbor ME: The Robert Abbe Museum.
1987 editor (with Russell G. Handsman), A Key into the Language of Woodsplint Baskets. Washington CT: American Indian Archaeological Institute.